Last week, researchers announced that they had been able to place, for the first time, original colors on a dinosaur --painting in striking stripes on Sinosauropteryx 's tail based on new evidence of pigment particles. Today, another team reports that they have decoded the colors of a different dino from head to tail. [More]

Forget polar bears or penguins. The charismatic megafauna suffering most from climate change may well be the wolverine--a vicious predator known for its uncanny strength and tenacity. Making it the perfect inspiration for the X-Me n superhero.  

The actual wolverine's super powers extend mostly to a tolerance for Arctic chill and supersized feet to permit quicker movement on snow. Those big feet might be hurting the largest member of the weasel family as snowpack declines across much of North America.  

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Seeing someone perform a virtuous deed (especially if they are helping another person), makes us feel good -- a positive, uplifting emotion, known as "elevation." New findings suggest that elevation may lead to helping behavior: participants who viewed an uplifting TV clip spent almost twice as long helping a research assistant than participants who saw a neutral TV clip or a comedy clip.

Some cells are natural rule-breakers. Neural crest cells for example, not only migrate throughout the body during development (most cells are more selective in their wandering), they are also more developmentally flexible than their predecessors (a no-no for nearly all cell types). Now researchers have shown that a protein that controls DNA accessibility is responsible for the cells' unruly ways.

Researchers are investigating the potential use of nonpathogenic baker's yeast as a promising, natural therapy for cancer.

Singapore and US scientists have mapped major components of the epigenome and DNA methylation for the entire human DNA sequence, and compared three cell types representing three stages of human development.

Apparently, the mysterious "3/4 law of metabolism" -- proposed by Max Kleiber in 1932, printed in biology textbooks for decades, and described as "extended to all life forms" from bacteria to whales -- is just plain wrong. "Actually, it's two-thirds," says University of Vermont mathematician Peter Dodds. A new paper of his helps overturn almost 80 years of near-mystical belief in a 3/4 exponent used to describe the relationship between the size of animals and their resting metabolism.

By analyzing sediments up to 4,000 years old, an environmental scientist is hoping to provide a tool to help predict future climate change. Ancient records of what was happening with climate conditions can be used with regional climate models to tell a story of what happened in the past and to correlate it to the present and the future. Current models typically use data only for the last 100 years or less and may miss wet and dry periods from past millennia.

When Olympic medals and multi-million-dollar contracts are at stake, athletes and coaches have been known to resort to drastic measures to strike gold. But as the steroid era evolves amidst increased testing and public hectoring, what other performance booster will enter the ring? [More]

The Celsius scale is an elegant, simple system of measurement: water freezes at 0 degree Celsius and boils at 100 degrees C. (The actual definition of the scale is a bit more complex, involving the so-called triple point of water, but that's the general idea.) But chefs at high altitudes know that the simplicity of Celsius doesn't always hold--the higher your kitchen, the lower the boiling point of water. Similarly, water's freezing point is negotiable, with " supercooled " water able to remain liquid down to around –40 degrees , and even colder at extreme pressures. Supercooling can occur if water is so pure and is kept in such uncontaminated conditions that the molecules have nothing to interact with and crystallize around. [More]